Encoding digital multimedia content typically requires significant amount of processing power, especially for real-time applications. In particular, video encoding is computationally intensive and typically requires a computer to have a fast central processing unit (CPU). In video encoding, motion estimation is often the most complex process. Motion estimation refers to the process of finding the best prediction for a block in the current frame from a previously encoded reference frame(s). Motion estimation is commonly conducted via searching. To capture the real motion for better prediction and visual quality, the search range cannot be very small. Accordingly, because the computational complexity of motion estimation is high, motion estimation occupies a significant portion of the processing power and resources that are needed for the whole encoding process and is usually the bottleneck.
Thus, there is a need for computers to more efficiently perform motion estimation so that video encoding can be accelerated without simply improving the speed of CPUs.